Change in policy paradigm has done the trick

Wed, Aug 21, 2019

SUDIPTA CHANDA
SILIGURI: The message has gone out loud and clear. India is taking its territorial issues to the next level.
Gone are the days when the visible machinery of anti-India forces in Jammu & Kashmir swung into action the moment command came from the Pakistan army.
India has now taken the action into the enemy camp by making Article 370 history.
The agenda now is a practical or juristic separation of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) from Pakistan’s influence.
How that agenda would pan out is for time to tell, but border dispute is no more an issue within. India has lobbed the border dispute right out of its territory and into Pakistan’s lap.
That has left our western neighbour raving, ranting and nervous. Running between Beijing, Washington, the UN and the middle-east with its nagging complaint, all it has earned so far is the status of a cry-baby.
The running around clearly proves that India has finally put the fear of God into that depraved nation, which survives on international alms.
There is no dearth of skeptics on either side of the border who would try to punch holes in this observation. They are reminded of the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech at Muzaffarabad, capital of (PoK) on August 14, Pakistan’s Independence Day.
In a televised speech Khan mounted sharp rhetoric against India for stripping J&K of its special status; a front Pakistan needs to keep up in a show of solidarity to what it believes is the Kashmir cause.
But he also gave away Pakistan’s nervousness on the issue by alleging that the Pakistani army had solid information that India was planning military action in PoK.
Whether the Pakistan army’s “solid information” is genuinely solid or not is for the Indian establishment to acknowledge or reject as the case may be.
But, what is certain is that India has chased out the Kashmir bogey from its soil. The debate will now be confined to PoK, which means genuine trouble for Pakistan.
If India had its share of territorial and integral problems in J&K all these years, Pakistan has its share of similar problems in PoK.
India considers Pakistan’s presence in PoK an encroachment and so India reserves the right to go for the jugular in that disputed area. That is, however, conjecture at this point.
But, an uprising by PoK domiciles opposed to Pakistani occupation of their land is now a given. The problem is now Pakistan’s – that is what the repeal of Article 370 has most significantly achieved.
India’s change in the policy archetype over J&K has come late, but with stunning effect against Pakistan. That country is simply stumped.
Leaving Pakistan to stew in its own juice, which is due to its own doing, India for now is training its sights millions of miles away in space to the lunar orbit.
That is the difference between a forward-looking nation and one stuck in the rut of terrorism. (END)